We Are Currently Experiencing a High Volume of Calls

Have you ever received this message when you have dialled a company or a helpline? It seems to be the default position these days. Of course there will be times when demand can outstrip supply but if this is a continuous recorded response or auto response we shouldn’t be fooled, either as customers or vendors. What that response really means is that ‘we are under-resourced for the level of demand’ and its continuation beyond the very short term means ‘and we don’t think enough of our customers to allocate sufficient resources to fix the problem’.

I sense that in March 2020 when we first went into lockdown there were genuine reasons why service providers and vendors might be overrun. It takes time to organise IT and communications to service the customer base and still WFH. But I also sense that some organisations have decided that as customers have shown a tolerance towards inadequate service they now have a mandate to continue with poor service levels. Is your organisation one of those? And if so, I encourage you to rethink your position. I genuinely believe that during lockdown it was often the smaller and the scaling companies who were the first responders in keeping the wheels of the economy turning, simply by finding a way to provide goods and services. Almost all of the companies I have the pleasure to work with have had a really successful last 18 months with growth rates of 50 to 100% and beyond, and although I would love to say that it is because they had me as a coach a significant reason is that they were open for business and did whatever was necessary to service their clients. The ‘sovereignty of the customer’ is still a thing. We forget that at our peril.

I am on a mission to help business leaders get better financial results with less stress and more time to enjoy it and I believe that when businesses are well run they benefit everybody; employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders and leaders alike. To help make your world a better world you can contact me at